--- title: 'Free-Range Parenting' Shouldn't Be Seen as Child Neglect: Report description: "Parents are swept into the system and labeled at fault when they have made reasonable parenting decisions," the report said canonical: https://time.com/3988798/parenting-differences-child-neglect-report/ author: Charlotte Alter article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-07T15:37:15.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:24.485Z og:title: 'Free Range Parenting' Too Often Leads to Child Neglect Investigations: Report og:description: "Parents are swept into the system and labeled at fault when they have made reasonable parenting decisions," the report said og:url: https://time.com/3988798/parenting-differences-child-neglect-report/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a3e2328c6e526fe/69885e57e20a8757fba8ca55/gettyimages-461898258.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5760 og:image:height: 3240 og:image:alt: Danielle and Alexander Meitiv Are Being Investigated For Letting Their Children Walk Home Alone From A Playground og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Free Range Parenting' Too Often Leads to Child Neglect Investigations: Report twitter:description: "Parents are swept into the system and labeled at fault when they have made reasonable parenting decisions," the report said twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a3e2328c6e526fe/69885e57e20a8757fba8ca55/gettyimages-461898258.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 'Free Range Parenting' Too Often Leads to Child Neglect Investigations, Report Finds > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. Culture editor Eliza Berman taps TIME's collective taste and perspective to surface what is worth watching, reading, talking about and sharing, and why. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Twice a week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: The Truth About Egg Freezing [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Egg Freezing](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/A1nDxOli.m3u8) (8:41)  _Published 2015-07-16. Vicki Rokhlin, 28, is relying on her 14 frozen eggs to have children. But will they work?_  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Aug 7, 2015 3:37 PM UTC  Danielle and Alexander Meitiv are being investigated by Child Protective Services for letting their children walk home alone from a playground. (Sammy Dallal--For The Washington Post via Getty Images) Danielle and Alexander Meitiv are being investigated by Child Protective Services for letting their children walk home alone from a playground. (Sammy Dallal--For The Washington Post via Getty Images) The Washington Post—The Washington Post/Getty Images  by [Charlotte Alter](https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/)  ## Charlotte Alter Senior Correspondent Aug 7, 2015 3:37 PM UTC Charging responsible parents with child neglect when they encourage their kids to be independent diverts valuable resources away from true cases of child abuse and negligence, according to a new report. The [Family Defense Center,](http://www.familydefensecenter.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/When-Can-Parents-Let-Children-Be-Alone-FINAL.pdf) a Chicago nonprofit that advocates for justice in the child welfare system, said allegations of “inadequate supervision” often arise when children are left unattended for a short period of time, even when the kids are not really at risk and the parents have made a calculated parenting decision to allow them to be on their own. The report, which covered high-profile battles over “free range parenting” as well as lesser-known reports of child neglect, found that allegations of “inadequate supervision” can push responsible parents into the child welfare system, endangering their custody of their children and wasting valuable state resources. “Parents are swept into the system and labeled at fault when they have made reasonable parenting decisions,” the report says. “Child welfare system resources are currently being devoted to the investigations of neglect allegations, such as inadequate supervision, where children are not at risk. This means fewer resources to investigate and indicate the serious cases of neglect or abuse.” The report looked at instances where parents were “charged with neglect for common, everyday parental decisions, such as allowing their children to independently walk to parks, play outside, or remain inside a car while the parent runs an errand.” One high-profile instance they point to is the Meitiv case, in which Maryland parents were charged with child neglect for allowing their two children, aged 10 and 6, to walk home from a local park during the day. The Meitivs were ultimately [cleared in June](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/marylands-free-range-parents-cleared-of-neglect-in-one-case/2015/05/25/deb30e12-0093-11e5-805c-c3f407e5a9e9%5Fstory.html), but their case has become a touchstone in the debate over what counts as a reasonable parenting decision and what is child neglect. Danielle Meitiv lauded the Family Defense Center’s report, praising them for focusing on “cases that didn’t get attention with families who suffered more than ours.” “The report highlights the terrible irony that the very people who are charged with protecting children end up traumatizing them and their families far too often,” she told the [Washington _Post._](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/report-parenting-decisions-too-often-touch-off-neglect-investigations/2015/08/06/ac5457b4-3b8a-11e5-8e98-115a3cf7d7ae%5Fstory.html) ## Transcript I liken it to the feeling when my friends get engaged and they're so excited that they just solved this huge mystery in their life, and I'm happy for them. But, when I went through it and when I froze my eggs, I realized that I I've done this for myself. There was no man swooping in to fill in this puzzle piece. That was really empowering to know that I took fate into my own hands, and have changed the path of my life, because I wanted to, and I could. [ MUSIC ] I have a lot of these dreams that I wanna live out on my timeline. A lot of those dreams include long spans of international travel. I wanna write a novel. At one point, I'd love to be a TED talker. And so I was at my gynecologist office and she was so supportive when I was telling her about my dreams. And I was having a lot of anxiety How I was going to fulfill all these dreams before 32, 33, 34. And so we started talking about egg freezing. I kind of brought it up to her as a joke. And she said, you know, you should really think about this. And so she referred me to a doctor. We've seen a transformation in the type of patient who comes in for elective egg freezing. Six or seven years ago, it was often a woman who was experiencing concerns over her reproductive potential, Many of them already had diminished ovarian reserve. We could fast forward that today, where the woman are coming in. They're 35 years old, very frequently. The buzz is in the air at the company that Women her age, in her situation, are taking charge of their fertility, are coming in and freezing their eggs. So the culture has changed dramatically. [ MUSIC ] So I'll show you what we're basically trying to do is replace the water in the cell with a sugar- based cryoprotectant solution so that there are no ice crystals. Ice crystals cause damage to cell membranes [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Okay. Now I'm going to load the eggs onto the cryo device. All right, and then they get plunged into the liquid nitrogen. So this is the liquid nitrogen tank. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] This one here [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ INAUDIBLE ] That's it. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We've been fortunate enough to have dozens of women achieve a healthy pregnancy after using their thawed eggs. Recent reports in the literature suggests that over 10, 000 healthy babies have now been born from egg freezing technology. But some of those numbers that you just mentioned. Those are often just any births from a frozen egg. They don't necessarily distinguish between whether the egg was frozen by a donor or by a mother herself. Do you have any data about The number of babies that have been born from the mother's own frozen egg here at this clinic. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So reports suggest that we've had over 10, 000 babies nationally and internationally from frozen eggs. But I know a lot of those babies aren't necessarily from women who have electively frozen their eggs for social reasons, many of them are from donor eggs. There is a difference from taking a 22 year old frozen egg and taking a 35 or 40 year old woman's egg. and someday thawing and fertilizing and transferring. So we have to be really careful about how we council patients. I know that many of the patients who freeze their eggs here are going to be able to someday have a healthy baby, but it won't be everybody. That's why it's not an insurance policy. It's just an opportunity to take some control over something we've really never had control of before. The truth about egg freezing is it's a relatively new procedure. It was just declassified as being experimental about a little over a year ago. So for that reason, there is not this large, comprehensive data pool of the number of eggs frozen, and then thawed, that have become babies. The vast majority of eggs that have been frozen have not been retrieved yet. So women have to understand that there are no numbers for them to call from when they are looking for will this work me. Because I'm 28 and my fertility is the best that it will ever get, I was able to do everything in one round. And I didn't understand the power of that until I woke up in the hospital right after surgery next to a 34 year old woman and she told me this was her third time trying this year, that's putting your body through three rounds of hormone injections, three surgeries And it's three times as expensive. And so the moment that really validated it for me was when this 34 year- old woman who had done 3 rounds in a year turned to me and said, wow. I wish someone had told me to do this at 28 cuz I would have. Some physicians and some marketing fertility arms do push women to freeze their eggs when they're at a very young age. Other clinics prefer that women wait until age 30 because what they've found is that the younger you are when you freeze, the less likely you are to need the eggs later on. However, as with most things in life, this is a double- edged sword. The younger you are, the better the quality of your eggs is going to be. Decreasing fertility starts during the time a woman is in her late puberty and goes throughout her life. Even when a woman is still getting her period in her late forties or even early fifties, it doesn't mean she's making normal eggs and that they're gonna be able to end up with healthy babies from that. It's not the success rate. It's the success rate for women like you. Are you 29? Are you 39? Are you 33? How are your tubes? Or do you have endometriosis? What's your hormonal health like? What's your body mass index? There are a huge number of varietal. That will determine conception success, whether it's natural or medically enhanced. Before I did all the research, I thought egg freezing was easy. And then I started reading blogs. And I started to get a sense of like whoa, your body goes through a lot. You're essentially forcing yourself to go into pregnancy mode in two weeks instead of nine months. I mean my estrogen shot up from 61 to 1900, I felt crazy. And I wasn't really prepared for that. Most of the women that have reached out to me The overall theme is, thank you for bringing awareness to the gravity of how much you put your body through, how much time this takes, how different your life is. Women shouldn't take this lightly, it's a big financial consideration, it's a big health consideration. It's a month of your life that you're sitting at home, you're not dating, you're not drinking, you're not smoking, you're not partying, you're not traveling. That was really hard for me Me. I mean I was up every morning at 7 AM to get an ultrasound, and a blood test. [ MUSIC ] I think there's no guarantee in life, right? No guarantee that I could have a child naturally, and there's no guarantee that one of these implanted embryos will stick. So, all that I can do is Is give my kids the best shot of a healthy future as possible. [ MUSIC ] Egg freezing is an amazing Oppurtunity but it is not. Absoutely not. An ironclad insurance policy. Know that going in. Hedging your bets is always a good idea in life. And you've got about $ 17000 in your back pocket that you're not gonna notice if it goes away Consider egg freezing. It's really going to work for a lot of women, but it's not going to work for everyone. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3988798/parenting-differences-child-neglect-report/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3988798/parenting-differences-child-neglect-report/"},"headline":"'Free Range Parenting' Too Often Leads to Child Neglect Investigations, Report Finds","datePublished":"2015-08-07T15:37:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:02:24.485Z","description":"\"Parents are swept into the system and labeled at fault when they have made reasonable parenting decisions\"","url":"https://time.com/3988798/parenting-differences-child-neglect-report/","keywords":["Living","Parenting","Children","kids","Child abuse","families"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a3e2328c6e526fe/69885e57e20a8757fba8ca55/gettyimages-461898258.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Charlotte Alter","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/charlotte-alter/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0a3e2328c6e526fe/69885e57e20a8757fba8ca55/gettyimages-461898258.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Danielle and Alexander Meitiv Are Being Investigated For Letting Their Children Walk Home Alone From A Playground","caption":"Danielle and Alexander Meitiv Are Being Investigated For Letting Their Children Walk Home Alone From A Playground","creditText":"The Washington Post—The Washington Post/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3988798/parenting-differences-child-neglect-report/","name":"'Free Range Parenting' Too Often Leads to Child Neglect Investigations, Report Finds"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Truth About Egg Freezing","description":"Vicki Rokhlin, 28, is relying on her 14 frozen eggs to have children. 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